The subject invention relates to the field of document generation systems, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for interacting with a periodically issued document, like a newspaper, to revise the document content to be more customized to an individual subscriber.
The invention is particularly applicable to printed documents which include dataglyphs or tokens representative of the document and the subscriber to the document, wherein subscriber redactions to the document itself can be identified for modifying content and form of future editions. However, the subject invention is applicable to any system which provides routine generation of a document edition, either printed or electronically, and that presents an opportunity for the customized editing of a second edition by general profile guidelines for communicating information indicated by the subscriber as being particularly useful or of interest.
For purposes of pure reading, it is a fact people vastly prefer paper documents as opposed to electronic displays. However, most newspaper or news magazine type documents present an overwhelming variety and amount of information, most of which is of no interest to any one particular subscriber. For example, the top ten news stories in the paper may be of interest to most readers, but beyond these, the remaining content will have variable interest to any one reader depending upon the reader's hobbies and occupation.
Given the wealth of information available today, custom filters which adjust content to a particular user's desires are becoming increasingly useful. In electronic communication, profiles for filtering E-mail and Usenet articles are very common. On the other hand, mass media has traditionally been organized on a much coarser granularity, as by subject matter such as "sports" or "business". For the web, a number of mass media publications, e.g., newspapers and magazines, have offered on-line information services which include intelligent filtering based on user profiles. However, given the affordance of paper and the way people prefer to read print media, these online services cannot be widely used for fine-grained profile adjustments, i.e., customizing the content to individual subscribers, as long as they read on paper rather than online. The evidence remains strong that users will continue to prefer reading on paper as opposed to reading with an on-line browser. This complicates the updating of fine-grained subscriber profiles. Users need to remember what they thought of authors or topics between the time they read articles and the particular time they next use their computer.
Downloading and printing of electronic forms of newspapers from the web provides the convenience of paper for reading, but precludes filtering of content except to the extent that the reader wishes to spend the time selecting and printing portions of a single document. More importantly, this printing precludes back-channel communication to the publisher in a manner to identify a profile of preferences of the subscriber. In other words, if the subscriber wished to identify subjects having a high interest and subjects having a low interest, a publisher could print available content according to these preferences to provide a somewhat customized document. The profile thus comprises the recorded set of preferences and dislikes.
The present invention contemplates a new and improved system which overcomes the prolix disadvantages of mass media print communication to effectively combine the advantageous features of the two relevant technologies. That is, the customized newspaper which can now be read on an electronic display, is combined with the affordances and conveniences of a printed paper interface, for a resulting interactive newspaper, customized to a subscriber-identified profile.